


justify another fire brigade

by kiiouex



Series: Rovinsky Week 2018 [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: BIG Explosions, Explosions, Fourth of July, M/M, Mostly Gen actually unless you're really into pyrotechnics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 03:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14323350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: “You finally got the BYO memo. Is it something special?”“Fuckin’ bespoke,” Ronan replies. “Made to order, and just for you.” He peels the blanket back, careful to keep it between his hands and the gleaming, star-bright sphere inside.





	justify another fire brigade

**Author's Note:**

> Cars // **Parties** , finally a prompt so simple that even I can't forget to follow it 
> 
> beta read by [light of my life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) I should really make a template at this point

Monmouth's ground floor is slowly but steadily filling up with explosives.

It looks like an evidence locker, or something very soon to be featured on a feature-length tragedy special, and Gansey surveys the collection of molotovs, pipe bombs, and cartoonish dynamite with his lips pressed tight together. Ronan hops up to perch on a barrel with a very big skull slapped across the front, apparently unconcerned about the crime scene he’s created.

“Much as I appreciate you not keeping these _in_ the apartment,” Gansey says at last, voice careful and fingers steepled so nervously in front of his face, “You don't mind sleeping over this?”

“I’ll get rid of them soon,” Ronan replies flippantly. “I’m practicing.”

“Practicing,” Gansey repeats, a little faint. To his left, Adam inspects the trigger mechanism of some of Ronan’s homemade pyrotechnics, with a hint of disapproval. “Practicing what?”

Ronan thinks of Kavinsky’s face, backlit by his burning car, that crooked grin, every stupid feeling that kicks up at the sight of fires and cars and sunglasses. Kavinsky has posed a question that he needs a very good answer to. “Making something that explodes.”

From the pile of bombs, Adam says, “He needs the practice.”

Gansey looks more than a little stricken. “For the fourth? You're actually going?” He manages to sound both deeply disappointed in Ronan, for responding to Kavinsky, and in Kavinsky, for existing.

“ _You_ told me it’s rude to turn down invitations,” Ronan growls, deeply irritated by the slight. He'd only brought Gansey down to the first floor because the sign on the back of their door said the landlord needed to be aware of fire risks. He hadn’t realised his pile of bombs was going to be such a big deal. “And _these_ won’t explode, okay, I made them without the initiators and shit, they’re just _practice_.”

“But,” says Gansey, a little helplessly, “Kavinsky.”

“Yeah,” Adam says with an elbow into Ganseys side and a superior expression, “Kavinsky.”

Ronan is fed up with them both.

“If these are just... practice,” Gansey says carefully, “Then I'm going to go and see what advice the internet has about defusing these safely, initiator or no. _I'd_ rather not sleep over them.”

“It’s not like they'll go off!” Ronan shouts at his retreating back. And, more quietly, “You didn’t mind all week.”

In the silence after Gansey leaves, a faint sound from the mound of explosives becomes plain. Adam fails to resist pointing it out: “Something’s ticking.”

“Yeah no shit, some of them _always_ tick,” Ronan mutters, surveying the pile. He's not very impressed with any of his creations so far. He’s figured out how to make a real combustible, but they're all so... referential. None of them would really make a good party favour, none of them are impressive, none of them reflect the _challenge_ in Kavinsky’s eye when he extended the invitation to fourth. Ronan could come with an armful of fireworks, with something expensive, with something illegal, but he doesn’t feel like any of those are a proper gift.

And, whatever he might be comfortable saying out loud, it is very much a gift.

Gansey and Parrish know, and Parrish is looking at him in that terrible way he's got, all knowing and portentous and nosy as shit. He cares less than Gansey about what Ronan’s up to, but he knows a fuckton more of the details. Their truce is unsteady. Especially when Adam is apparently capable of looking Ronan dead in the eye and asking, “You want to impress him, right?”

“Keep your nose out, Parrish,” Ronan growls, deeply unhappy at being _known_.

Adam has grown very good at ignoring his growls and warnings and anything else short of a real scuffle. “Kavinsky’s not worth impressing,” he says plainly, neutral expression on his eerie face. “But if you’re _going_ to ignore good sense, then it seems to me the problem you've got is you keep trying to reproduce actual bombs. That's not really your style.”

Something clicks. Ronan refuses to say thank you on principle.

On Adam’s way out he turns back to say, “Make sure you disarm all of this _properly_ and don’t just throw it in someone’s backyard.”

That had only briefly been Ronan’s plan, and he flips Adam off as a salute.

 

On the morning of the fourth, Ronan sleeps in. By afternoon he has his contribution in hand. Early evening and he drives himself alone to the fairgrounds, with his precious creation in the flame-retardant blanket that Parrish helped him rummage up.

Neither Gansey nor Adam wanted to come with him, a fact Ronan is grateful for, though he suspects Gansey is attempting to boycott and hoping Ronan will rediscover sense. Adam had simply said outright that he didn't want to watch Ronan flirt, and then had the bad grace to dodge when Ronan tried to smack him.

Now he eyes the blanket-wrapped object on his passenger seat. He'd hoped it wouldn't feel like flirting, bringing someone a present that can take their hand off, or their face if they’re stupid enough to hold it close. He thinks of the way Kavinsky’s mouth twists when he grins, all those white teeth, the dare that’s kept him up since it was given, the idea that if he brings something good, he’ll be rewarded.

If this is flirting, he hopes Kavinsky asking him to show up was at least as bad. Maybe this is how they communicate now, an explosion so much more expressive than words, a terrible romance in some roundabout, alternative way. It feels like a Gansey-like topic, and Ronan drives it from his mind and finds somewhere to park.

The BMW slots into a line of so many black cars, a little further away from the obvious family vehicles, though a lot of those are starting to pack up as night settles in. Ronan wades through the crowd, trying to keep the parcel in his arms away from unwise elbows, though if the thing can’t survive one good knock they’re all fucked.

Everywhere he looks people are enjoying K’s party, smaller fireworks, cheaper beer, none of the _really_ good stuff on display, though it won’t be until the riff-raff clears out. A lot of cars he knows, a lot of faces he recognises, but none he's interested in.

It's Proko who appears at his elbow, looking as sharp as Ronan's ever seen him and uncharacteristically pleased by the sight of Ronan. “You actually came,” he says, slapping Ronan on the shoulder, paying no mind to the bundle Ronan holds in the crook of his arm. “Fuck, we thought your mates would talk you out of it.”

“I wanted to come,” Ronan says, bristling. Even though Proko didn't _say_ ‘handler’, it's got the same ring. “I was fucking invited. Where’s _your_ overlord?”

“Over that way,” Proko says happily, with a jerk of his head to a distant corner of the grounds, a space apart from the crowd and the noise. There's not much there yet, a circle of people and three cars with their headlights on. They look too quiet to be K’s group, but as Ronan crosses to them over the trash-littered grass he feels the heat in the air, the tension, the eagerness in the slopes of those shoulders.

The first firework goes off before Ronan's reached them, and it's not like the little Catherine wheels families are sending up back in populated areas, it's a light that puts the headlights to shame and a _bang_ that makes a real attempt on Ronan's eardrums. The air hangs in the aftermath, before a chorus of whoops rise from the circle, human enough to rise through the ringing in Ronan’s ears.

Kavinsky spots him before the rest, and his smile is unbridled delight. “Lynch,” he shouts, peeling himself away from his circle, arms thrown wide. “You actually made it, and not a leash in sight.” Another bang, smaller, from the group behind him, but he doesn’t flinch even as the shockwave ripples across the grass. All the metal in his ears shines in the afterglow, his chains and his gold and the ugly ring on the finger he points at Ronan’s parcel. “And you finally got the BYO memo. Is it something special?”

“Fuckin’ bespoke,” Ronan replies. “Made to order, and just for you.” He peels the blanket back, careful to keep it between his hands and the gleaming, star-bright sphere inside.

K leans in to look, the light from Ronan’s gift whitening his lenses to match the rims. He is so very deeply pleased. “And what the fuck is this?”

It is a meteor, a comet, a cracked ball of pitted, pitch rock, with liquid universe sloshing around in the core and infinite, incredible light visible between the cracks. Ronan raps on it hard, and it sparks, sheer white and trembling, up to a few knocks but delicate, ephemeral, and absolutely vibrating with the want to explode.

Still with the blanket between the meteor and his fingers, Ronan tosses it to Kavinsky, light as anything; Kavinsky catches it bare handed, and burns. With only a hiss he bowls it back low, dropping it on the grass while his fingertips steam. Liquid universe runs hot, and Ronan laughs, high and bright, while all the grass around his gift begins to burn.

“Such an artist,” Kavinsky says, with that crooked smile that makes Ronan’s blood run hot, “Can’t just make a fucking bomb, you’ve got to sketch it and grab it out of the stars. What’s the radius on that thing?”

“Dunno,” Ronan replies, scooping it back up in the fireproof fabric. “The dream place knew I wanted something flashy, and this is what it gave me. Might be pretty big.”

“Sexy,” Kavinsky says, deadpan. He takes it from Ronan’s arms, tips it over to feel the weight of its glittering payload shift, bathed in the light pouring out if it. Ronan watches, feeling a fist clenched in his chest, bearing down tight, not capable of saying a single goddamned word. This is worth the effort.

Abruptly, Kavinsky releases the meteor and dropkicks it, lets the trail of astral sparks arc up and along until the thing crashes back to earth. It’s not upset enough to explode, but it screeches as it flies, low and quiet and at a frequency to put an ache in Ronan’s back teeth. Kavinsky whistles his appreciation at the crash, light flying off the impact like chips of bone, dying as they fall. “ _Very_ sexy,” he tells Ronan. “Let’s crack it open.”

Ronan’s meteor is a star, is his heart, is clearly too beautiful for the party he has brought it to. Explosions are the simplest language. “What did you have in mind?”

There’s a low fire around the meteor by the time the crowd is properly assembled and Kavinsky has a pipe bomb in hand. Ronan worries the fire might set his comet off before they want it to; Kavinsky wants an audience. He and Kavinsky stand apart, closest to the meteor, probably not far enough away, and Ronan’s heartbeat is a constant kick, even before K offers him the pipe bomb.

“You bought it, you bomb it,” he offers, and there is something in how even he sounds that makes him surreal.

Ronan shakes his head though, doesn’t take it. “Your party, man. Gift for the hostess.”

He is not going to survive this night. He cannot possibly be built to survive this kind of adrenaline for this long. Kavinsky turns away and throws, a practiced sort of thing, no sparks trailing the bomb but just enough light spilling off the meteor that Ronan can see it lands where it’s meant to.

There is a pause, and then there is the sound of the bomb, it’s tinny little alert as it’s timer ticks down, and then it explodes; first the red-orange of human fire, then the white of the star rushing out, expanding, swallowing the red fire and then everything else.

It is a fractured explosion, a crack in the universe, shrieks and shouts from everyone watching as the _screech_ from the bomb rises in volume and pitch until it’s out of human hearing. When the overwhelming light of the bomb fades, Ronan’s ears are ringing and his eyes seem wrong; every other light around has stayed too-bright, the stars above radiant, unmissable, and deeply disapproving.

Sensation fades back in to Kavinsky slapping him on the back, cackling his delight, and even when others crowd in to ask what the _actual_ fuck just happened, K’s arm stays around his shoulders, grin so savage and _alive_. It’s the most awake Ronan’s ever seen him, and so very, very worth the effort.

Kavinsky’s arm stays around his shoulders all night. The ground where the bomb has been is a sheet of glass, shattered at the edges and _deep_ in the middle. An absolute marvel, and one more toy for the partygoers to break. Ronan absolutely does not care, happy where he is, letting K fold him into the pack like this time he’s actually here to stay.

Kavinsky’s friends are happier to have Ronan around than he’s _ever_ seen them, even with everything they’re taking, a tinge of relief and gratitude adding weird weight to the way they look at him. Ronan is not thick enough that he doesn’t get the implication, but he’d rather not dwell on it. He made K light up, and he wants _this_ , the good bit, without the reminder of how fragile and chemical it might be.

The party burns his retinas until the sun’s back up, until he’s about ready to collapse somewhere, feeling soot-soaked and deafened and absolutely fucking fulfilled. He drops onto the hood of a car that burned out hours ago, shutting his eyes against the dawn, feeling charred metal groan as Kavinsky levers himself up beside him.

Somewhere across the field there are embers burning down to nothing, too-loud music still pulsing from a set of inconsiderate speakers, a dry and steady aftertaste of ash. It’s pretty while it lasts.

"It could be like this,” Kavinsky tells him, too steady and heavy for Ronan’s exhausted mind. “You and me, man, just like this.”

Ronan wishes that he believes him. There is a voice in his head that does not think it can last. But there’s a twist in his heart that _wants_ anyway, fire and blood and eventual cinders. He’s never worked as hard as he has to impress Kavinsky. He’s never _wanted_ as badly as he wanted this.

Kavinsky’s looking at him, and he’s lost his shades somewhere along the way, eyes hooded but still sharp, something like lucid, and he’s saying it could be like this, whether or not he believes himself.

Behind him is a shattered sheet of glass, are all the too-bright stars, still holding out against the dawn and dazzling to Ronan’s burnt eyes. It's all magic and gorgeous and fuck, maybe they could have it.

**Author's Note:**

> yup I'm still on [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/), always love to know what people think of my stuff ♥


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